


Where the Light Gets In

by QuillerQueen



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Dystopia, F/M, Inspired by OQ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillerQueen/pseuds/QuillerQueen
Summary: The Divide has marked the border between the lands of magic and that with none for centuries. A single, supposedly impossible crack in the wall is all it takes for two people to meet and discover a unique connection - and perhaps the right push to change fate.





	Where the Light Gets In

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this lovely manip - although I think my mind went off on a tangent.
> 
> https://twitter.com/willow1411/status/907995138793885697

They’ve threatened to banish her before, when she was caught experimenting, to the place beyond the Divide.

 It stretches before her now, tall and impenetrable, a washed-out, colourless beige colossus splitting the horizon east to west, marking the End of the World.

 And beyond the Divide lies the Land Without Magic.

 A lone and miserable place. A horrendous, unthinkable, unmentionable place. The home of outlaws and outcasts descended from those who’d waged war on those with the Gift, and lost.

 Limestone and fairy dust keep the two worlds apart. No one ever crosses the Divide. There’s no way to climb over, even if it weren’t infused with magic--the stone is smooth, with not a foothold to be found, not so much as a fissure. Unbreachable, the Dark One teaches--on this, and little else, both he and the Blue Fairy agree.

 Regina wishes for nothing more than to breach that unbreachable obstacle and be free.

 That’s what led her to the foot of the Divide on that fateful day, and that’s what brings her here now.

 She approaches carefully--while not exactly forbidden, strolls by the border wall aren’t exactly common, and she’s already regarded with suspicion due to her...inclinations. Making sure the coast is clear, she sets off along the wall, dragging her fingertips over cool, ungiving stone.

 And then she digs. Her gloves bear the brunt of it to avoid more dirt under her nails and blisters on her skin by the time she brushes the dust off the tiny crack masquerading as intact stone. Halfway through, she thinks she hears the same scrabbling on the other side, and then--

 “Hello, love.”

 Her heart leaps, her stomach swoops madly. Her body always insists on acting out like this around him--it seems it can neither help the foolish display nor does it care in the slightest to be embarrassed by its overeager response.

  _It’s not like he can see you,_ she thinks bitterly.

 “Hi,” she whispers, and now he’ll have caught on to her infantile giddiness anyway--but then he always seems to guess with her, doesn’t he?

 “How’d the trial go?”

 “I’m still here, aren’t I?” she scoffs, then sighs. Robin is blameless in all this; he of all people doesn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her ire. So she quells her anger and elaborates. “The usual playbook. The Dark One pretends he wants me gone, and the wretched fairy acts like she gives a damn about me or believes even for a moment that I might have a place with her goody-two-shoes flock. It’s a sham, and we all know it, but we still go through the motions every few months. Nothing ever changes.”

 “You have,” he points out, and fine, she supposes that’s true. In a way. She hopes.

 “In their eyes I’m still a monster.”

 “They also see the world as black and white, preach that magic is the sole determiner of a person’s worth, that it must innately be either light or dark with nothing in between. They’re wrong about that as they’re wrong about you. The woman I know is the furthest thing from a monster.”

 “You’ve never even seen me,” Regina quips, though it comes out much too melancholy for her liking, so she turns it up a notch: “What if I have horns and cloven feet? Or better yet, snakes for hair and a lethal gaze?”

 “The lethal gaze I might believe,” he teases back, flirting, always flirting--and then he goes soft on her again, his voice tingling pleasantly like a caress: “But not the rest. I know your heart.”

 “I wish we could…”

 She lifts a hand to the stone, and swears it feels warmer than the rest, knows his is resting against it from the other side, stroking the sorry excuse for the other’s skin.

 “I know.”

 It’s wistful with clear undertones of heartbreak, and she can’t bear this crushing heaviness for another second.

 “So…” she stalls. “How was your day?”

 His chuckle is humourless though, far from the reprieve they’re seeking.

 “Stressful,” he admits with caution. “Roland’s taken ill, you see.”

  _Again?_

 “That’s...I’m sorry, Robin.” And she knows his answer, of course she does, but she just has to say it: “My offer still stands.”

 His refusal is immediate and unequivocal.

 “It’s too big of a risk, Regina. We’ve been through this, yeah? We’ll manage. We always have. He’ll improve.”

 Only he doesn’t. Not the next day, or the day after, or the one after that. Regina returns to their spot daily, scratching sand from the crack upon arrival and refilling it before departure, filling the space inbetween with conversation about everything but the thing most prominent on their minds. They keep nothing from each other, except for one little thing: she never mentions she ventures our by night, gathers herbs under the full moon, and mutters incantations over a softly simmering cauldron.

 “I need your help,” Robin says brokenly a week later, voice cracking with guilt to ask her and trembling with fear should he not. “Please.”

 A choked sob is all he can manage when she tells him the potion’s ready--and so is she.

 Because nothing’s worth the loss of a child.

 That’s how she finally finds the courage, and he finally finds the nerve, to cross the line.

 That’s how they find themselves standing face to face at last in the viridescent shimmer of illegal pixie dust, on the cusp of the unknown: he, an outlaw of meagre means; she, a turncoat with a gift that counts for a curse in his land.

 The future holds as much threat as it does promise.

 “We’re here now,” Robin chuckles wetly as they stand in a tight embrace over Roland’s cot, watching the child’s breathing even out as the potion courses through his wrecked little body, banishing fever and inviting healing--and Regina can barely breathe for the hope that threatens to make her chest burst as Robin presses a kiss to her temple and whispers: “and this is true.”


End file.
